I watched this: Battle Royale

Don’t make the same mistake I did.

I have to admit, I watched this movie for self-righteous reasons.

You see, this 2000 Japanese movie has the same scenario as The Hunger Games – namely, a bunch of teenagers dropped into a remote outpost and forced to kill each other in order to survive – but has cult-movie status. Therefore, I figured, Battle Royale would be better than the Hollywood product that came after, and having watched both I could knowledgeably say, “The Hunger Games? Phah! Have you seen Battle Royale?”

I’m sorry to say, friends, that Battle Royale is a royal piece of shit.

In fact, I would gladly submit to having my eyelids propped open with clothespins and made to watch The Hunger Games for eight hours straight than sit through this piffle a second time.

Girl with a scythe. Big deal.

Battle Royale actually starts off slightly better, however. Where The Hunger Games took forever and a day to get anywhere, the violence starts early in Battle Royale. The Japanese movie doesn’t bother with things like the reason why these forty or so teens have to fight to the death – it gets right into the action.

However, it soon becomes clear that what seems like narrative expediency on the part of Battle Royale‘s filmmakers is actually an early indicator that these guys don’t have a fucking clue.

Nothing makes sense in this movie. Having not read the book, I don’t know if the gaps are filled in, but Battle Royale is full of the kind of behaviour that no relatively normal human would ever engage in, not even under these circumstances. I mentioned that no real reason is given for the central conceit, but this isn’t entirely true; near the beginning of the movie, the kids’ former teacher mentions something about them not respecting adults. However this isn’t ever shown and only vaguely alluded to this once, and anyway it doesn’t jibe with what anything else we see in the movie, especially in the flashbacks.

Oh, and those flashbacks! Good god, what sentimental and tedious rubbish. And they never stop! Even at the end, the movie keeps shoveling more flashbacks at us in an attempt to derive some meaning from the nonsense that has come before.

Even the violence isn’t redemptive. Battle Royale doesn’t shy away from a good Scanners-like head explosion or axe in the skull the way the ultra-squeamish and money-hungry Hunger Games flick does, but the blood and gore isn’t all that shocking or even effective since we don’t give a tinker’s fart about the characters.

And the acting! Whatever the problems The Hunger Games has, at the end of the day it still has Jennifer Lawrence, an actress with the ability to make us care about a piece of toast (essentially, her character in The Hunger Games). But with the exception of veteran Japanese actor Takeshi Kitano (whose character by the way also makes no sense), the performances are uniformly terrible. There’s lots of yelling and screaming and eyeball bulging but not for a second do you believe any of these kids to be in any real danger, never mind fighting for their lives.

Both movies wrap up in totally unsatisfying ways; The Hunger Games isn’t resolved so much as it holds out its hand to take your money for a sequel. Battle Royale gives us a somewhat tidier ending, but it makes little sense in context of the rest of the movie. Neither one, for my money, is worth wasting your time on.

Revisited: Rickie Lee Jones’ Pirates

Rickie Lee Jones, Pirates (1981).

I couldn’t believe I no longer had this record.

I had a sudden hankering this past week to hear “We Belong Together”, the album’s opener, but was mortified to find Pirates missing from my collection – I must’ve got rid of it when I sold a whole whack of vinyl a couple of years ago before moving. Strange, since the record was such a huge part of my adolescence.

Growing up, I loved this album; listening to it today, I find it just as beautiful, wise and mysterious as I did as a teenager. Jones released it in 1981, two years after her debut; I think I might have bought Pirates because Rolling Stone gave it five stars (I was an inveterate Rolling Stone reader in those days). For a 16-year-old who was into the Clash and Elvis Costello, Jones’ sophomore record was pretty heady stuff. Then again I loved Steely Dan (couldn’t get enough of Greatest Hits) as well, and they’re a big influence on the record (Donald Fageneven plays synth), particularly in the penultimate track, the eight-minute jazz odyssey “Traces of the Western Slopes”.

I think I had this!

But it’s the album’s street poetry that I responded to most – Jones’ visions of bohemia on songs like the title track, “We Belong Together”, and “Living It Up”. So many lines from this 30-year-old record have become part of my pop-culture hard-drive: “How could a Natalie Wood not get sucked/Into a scene so custom-tucked/Now look who shows up/” (“We Belong Together”); “Cleveland forgot/Memphis forgot/Where they were coming from” (“Woody and Dutch on a Slow Train”); “Oh my sad-eyed Sinatras” (“Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)”).

There are other things I love about this record. “We Belong Together” starts out like a forlorn, night-time New York piano ballad – but then, suddenly, midway through, it starts to swing! – but only briefly; but then, it swings again at the end. I love the moods of this record, how varied it is, from the street-poetry one-two punch of “We Belong Together” and “Living It Up”, which is followed by the brief, tragic “Skeletons” and the finger-snapping street-party mood of “Woody and Dutch On a Slow Train to Peking”. Jones opens Side 2 with “Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)”, which sounds to me now like her version of Bruce Springsteen‘s “10th Avenue Freeze-Out”, and ends with a perfect whisp of a song, “The Returns”.

So cool… Rickie Lee Jones circa 1980… I think.

Also on Side 2, “A Lucky Guy”, is probably the clearest thing the album has to a pop song; it reached #64 on the Billboard charts (“Chuck E.’s in Love”, from Jones’ debut, went to #4). I would imagine Pirates must have surprised people hoping for a repeat of her debut’s more traditional pop song approach. The album has never quite got its proper due, but I’m not the only one who thinks it’s one of the best records he’s ever heard.

Jones has released quite a few albums since, and many are notable, including the follow-up EP Girl At Her Volcano (which, I have to admit, I did not get at the time at all); The Magazine (which features one of my all-time favourite Jones songs, “It Must Be Love”); Flying Cowboys (which features another of my all-time favourite RLJ tracks, “Rodeo Girl”); GhOsTYhead (I think it’s the title track where she sings about doing Ecstasy); The Evening of My Best Day (“It Takes You There”); and 2007′s The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard.

I recall liking that last record, though I can’t remember a song; I listened to it while preparing for an interview with Miss Jones for one of the papers I was writing for at the time. I think I asked her about Olympia, Washington, where she spent some of her teens, and of course the record she was promoting. But I don’t think I asked anything about Pirates, which is a shame; today I would probably grill her about it. Then again, everything you need to know is there in the grooves.

I reviewed this: Turn Me On, Dammit!

Turn Me On, Dammit! (2011) movie poster.

I was fortunate enough to get a screener for this movie, a Norwegian sex comedy that opened this week in Vancouver. “Sex comedy” might not be the right description – that kind of calls to mind those British sex farces from the ’60s and ’70s (i.e. No Sex Please We’re British). Turn Me On, Dammit! is far more mild, while at the same breaking some cultural taboos that would probably have sent some ’70s theatregoers into convulsions.

Anyway, I really liked it – you can read my full review here. I also thought the different posters used to sell the movie are pretty interesting, so I’ve collected a bunch below. Leave a comment on your favourite – if you dare.

 

The Swedish movie poster for Ligg Med Mig (trans: Lie With Me), aka Turn Me On, Dammit!

Russian? movie poster for Turn Me On Dammit!

Fa meg pa, for faen (aka Turn Me On Dammit!).

Turn Me On, Dammit! (Fa Meg Pa, For Faen) hammer poster.

Watched: The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers directed by Ti West (2011).

I’d heard about Ti West as a fresh new voice in American horror. I’ve heard that before, though, so I approached The Innkeepers, his 2011 movie, with some skepticism.

I’m happy to report that this is a terrific little horror flick. I used the adjective “little” not to demean but to denote the film’s low budget, its lack of reliance on special effects and its emphasis on character.

Usually I’m not a huge fan of “auteurs” – that is, writer/directors – but West, who wrote the script as well as directed, smartly focuses on Claire (Sara Paxton, so natural in the role I was disappointed to learn she’s been acting since she was eight and wasn’t just discovered behind the till of a record store) and Luke, the two twentysomething hipsters manning the front desk of a Connecticut inn on a long weekend. (The movie could just as easily be set in Portland.)

Pat Healy and Sara Paxton in The Innkeepers.

Lena Dunham (Girls) is cast in a minor part, and Kelly McGillis (Top Gun, The Accused) is one of the few guests at the Yankee Pedlar Inn. There are plenty of good scares but West is most effective at building tension, only to relieve it with a laugh at his characters’ expense – up to a point.

Ultimately The Innkeepers‘ success is due to being just what it implies – a movie about two bored innkeepers who enjoy scaring each other a little too much. As with the best horror movies, The Innkeepers leaves you wondering just what happened, and what was real and what wasn’t. Of course the answer is moot – it’s just a movie, after all, and none of it’s real. But The Innkeepers got under my skin.

Sara Paxton in The Innkeepers.

Trailer – The Innkeepers (HD):

Graphic novel review: Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City

Interior art from Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem (Drawn & Quarterly, 2012).

Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem, recently published by Drawn & Quarterly, was one of those books (well, graphic novels) that I enjoyed while reading but had to force myself to pick up. I think this might have been due to the almost unvarying tone of deadpan humour and observation. There is no real story here, just vignettes of Delisle encountering the oddities and absurdities of life as an outsider in this conflicted city. I do feel I know more about Jerusalem than I did before I read the over 300 pages of Delisle’s book, and the art is terrific – considerably better than in Delisle’s previous books like Pyongyang – but I didn’t feel much of anything upon reading the last page.

However, one page I really liked, and that came as a complete surprise, is where Delisle sits down to watch the French-Canadian horror flick Martyrs. It’s the only movie mentioned in the whole book – and there’s a great little panel with a word balloon in red denoting a scream (otherwise there’s very little colour in the book) coming from the speaker as Delisle watches on his computer. Anyway, love that (somewhat obscure) film.

Full review is here.

I reviewed this: The Manara Library Volume Two

A few weeks ago I was fortunate to receive, in a box from Dark Horse Comics, a copy of Volume Two of their Manara Library editions. The publisher is collecting most if not all of the Italian comics artist’s works in nine books; the second (above) came out earlier this year, and the first in the fall of 2011. Volume Three, featuring Milo Manara‘s collaborations with filmmaker Federico Fellini, will be published in August.

Manara is best known for drawing naked girls, to put it bluntly. (He’s also crossed over into the North American mainstream with a Sandman story that appeared in an anthology and an X-Men comic (featuring the women of the X-Men) for Marvel.) But, while Volume Two‘s first story “El Gaucho” certainly features some typically gorgeous Manara females in lewd dishabille, it’s also a ripping good historical tale (written by cartoonist Hugo Pratt) about the early 1800s British invasion of Argentina. And the second half of the book isn’t dirty at all; it’s a series of eight brief stories that attempts to look at both sides of cases against historical figures such as Helen of Troy, Attila the Hun and Robert Oppenheimer. Though a little on the didactic side, these “Trial by Jury” stories are surprisingly readable and informative. And, of course, impeccably drawn by the master, even though they’re from early in his career.

My full review is on The Snipe News: http://www.thesnipenews.com/books-comics/manara-library-volume-two-review/

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Of all summer 2011 movies, Rise of the Planet of the Apes seemed to be the least promising (if you don’t count The Change-Up, Captain America: The First Avenger, Transformers 3… okay, so Apes had some competition). As far as I know, no one was crying out for a prequel, sequel, or reboot to the whole Apes mythos; it seems it had run its course, with the 2001 Tim Burton remake putting an even spikier nail in its coffin than Joel Shumacher’s nippley Batman and Robin did to that franchise.

But lo and behold, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a really good movie. It’s not great – it still dabbles in way too many cliches (the angry neighbour, the rapacious industrialist, the do-gooder scientist, ad infinitum). But Rise artfully strings together the action-movie and sci-fi tropes with which we have become agonizingly over-familiar into a fast-paced and surprisingly affecting story. No doubt the latter aspect is owing in no small part to Andy Serkis (Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films), who lends his magnificent body language to the main ape, Caesar.

And it’s definitely the apes who are the stars of the movie – James Franco is fine, as is John Lithgow (Freida Pinto as Franco’s love interest I’m afraid is completely forgettable) but everyone is ultimately overshadowed by the hairy beasts.

Freida Pinto and James Franco in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

I have to say, it’s been awhile since I’ve been on the edge of my seat for the climax of a big Hollywood movie, but Rise of the Planet of the Apes had me until the last frame. Now if the studio can only keep the damn dirty hands of the likes of Tim Burton, Joel Shumacher and other hacks away from any sequels.

 

 

Let It Beard available today

Boston Spaceships' Let It Be is out today. Huzzah!

Review – Boston Spaceships, Let It Beard

Forget about the Guided By Voices reunion that’s been taking place at music festivals around the U.S. this year.

While Robert Pollard conducts a final go-round with his beloved indie-rock outfit, the songwriter’s other life as a recording artist is way more interesting. Already this year has seen a number of Pollard releases, including his collaboration with former GBV guitarist Doug Gillard as Lifeguards, a collaboration with Big Dipper guitarist Gary Waleik under the name Mars Classroom, and at least one solo album. Crazily, each one has been worthwhile, and each has offered up several songs that stand up with the very best of Pollard – an astonishing claim, considering the literally hundreds of songs he’s written and recorded, including what is perceived as his heyday with the ’90s versions of Guided by Voices.

Let It Beard is the fifth and arguably the most ambitious album by Boston Spaceships, comprising Pollard and former GBV bassist Chris Slusarenko, as well as drummer John Moen. A 26-song rock album, Let It Beard stretches Pollard’s songwriting and adds to his sonic arsenal; usually a guitar-bass-drums traditionalist, for Let It Beard Pollard opens the recording studio doors to allow in a cellist and even what sounds like a banjo (“Let More Light Into the House”).

The album also features guest appearance from Wire’s Colin Newman, J. Mascis (guitar solo-ing up a storm on “Tourist UFO”) and Steve Wynn. It’s been advertised as “a subconscious concept album about the sorry state of rock ‘n’ roll” but, thanks to Pollard’s willfully obscure and colourful metaphors, you can listen to Let it Beard and happily think it’s about facial hair growth, mayonnaise or the joy of pushing together two inherently opposite words (“Chevy Marigold”).

In the past, Pollard has shown himself to be a master of Who-like anthem-rock, Beatles-esque pop, and even ’70s prog and glam, and Let It Beard is firmly in the rock/prog camp, but with enough melodic finesse to please pop fans. I’m only on the third listen, and the record is still offering up its treasures; it’s all immediate in its own way but a few more spins will be required before the classics are outed.

However, I can unreservedly recommend Let It Beard to Pollard and Guided by Voices fans; the album also makes another strong argument that, far from behind him, Pollard’s best moments are happening right now.

Order Boston Spaceships’ Let It Beard here.

Retrospective – Ragtime

“What do you play?”

“Whatever they want me to. And then I play ragtime.”

EL Doctorow’s novel, Ragtime, first published in 1975, was brought to the screen in 1981. The director was Milos Forman, who would go on to direct, among other movies, The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996).

I would have been 16 when Ragtime came out, which might explain why Elizabeth McGovern’s topless scene has imprinted itself on my then-still-mutating teenage brain.

Elizabeth McGovern and Brad Dourif in Ragtime (1981).

Revisiting that moment wasn’t the only reason I grabbed the DVD the other day while browsing the “Just out on DVD” rack at my local video store. It was the first time I’d even seen a DVD copy of the movie, period, and I was eager to see how (and if) it’s held up over the years. Also, in the intervening time since I first saw it (and read the book) I’ve become a huge Doctorow fan – Billy Bathgate has become one of my all-time favourite novels, and I loved recent reads The Book of Daniel, Sweetland Stories and his first novel Welcome to Hard Times. (As Forman says in the mini-doc that is one of the DVD extras: “Doctorow writes like an angel.”)

Thirty years later, Ragtime is marvelous.

Howard E. Rollins Jr. in Ragtime (1981).

The movie can’t quite achieve the richness of the multi-faceted novel, which is set in the first decade of the 20th century and has literally dozens of characters and just many incidents. Forman’s Ragtime is true to the novel’s historical sweep even as it necessarily boils down the saga into the story of Coalhouse Walker, a piano player whose quest for justice takes the movie to its tragic conclusion.

Ragtime is also the story of two families, one well off and living in New Rochelle, New York, the other an immigrant family in New York City. Historical figures (the architect Stanford White, Harry Houdini) and old newsreel footage intertwine with the movie’s fictions and plots in a way that delivers a truly panoramic view of the time.

What struck me most, upon viewing again decades later, is how well-paced Ragtime is. Forman masterfully juggles the various plots and characters; scenes last exactly as long as they should; just when you’re beginning to wonder what’s happening with other characters, the movie switches to their story.

The ending is beautifully done; final and elegiac, not in the least sentimental or sensational. (Although it could be argued – as Forman does in the mini-doc retrospective – that the film takes too lightly, or doesn’t take a position on, the subject of terrorism.)

And the casting is fabulous. Author Norman Mailer has a bit part as White; James Cagney, in his last role, takes over the screen in every scene he’s in; and Jeff Daniels turns a small but crucial role into a bravura piece of acting.

James Cagney in Ragtime (1981).

Mary Steenburgen, James Olson, Brad Dourif, Mandy Patinkin and McGovern (nominated for an Academy Award for her role as society beauty Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime, but perhaps best known for her role opposite Kevin Bacon in the 1988 hit She’s Having a Baby) are all terrific. But it’s Howard E. Rollins who, as the dignified Walker, gets the best line – one which, the day after watching the movie, is still reverberating in my mind.

It’s not quite midway through the movie, and Coalhouse Walker is visiting the New Rochelle house, where Sarah, the mother of his child, is working as a maid. She refuses to see him but he has let himself into the house when Father, the family patriarch (Olson), finds this uninvited guest sitting at the drawing-room piano.

“What do you play?” he asks, his interest nonetheless piqued by this well-dressed, articulate stranger who also happens to be as black as his name.

“Whatever they want me to,” Walker says cheerfully. And then, with a sparkle in his eye: “And then I play ragtime.”

Movies watched Jan 16 – Jan 22

Robert Downey Jr. as Charlie Chaplin

- by Shawn Conner

The second installment of a weekly feature wherein I review the movies I’ve watched.

Modern Times (library copy DVD, Monday night) A classic, a masterpiece, a great film – Modern Times (1936) is widely regarded as one of Chaplin’s best, and is full of iconic imagery and brilliant slapstick. Also, surprisingly, it has a routine built around the Little Tramp accidentally snorting a whole lot of coke. At 87 minutes, it’s the perfect length for a comedy.

Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp high on coke in Modern Times (1936).

The Green Hornet (illegal download, Tuesday night) – 87 minutes would have been the ideal length for the first superhero movie of 2011. Sure, director Michel Gondry brings a certain amount of visual wizardry to a fairly standard action-comedy film, with Seth Rogen and his sidekick Kato (Jay Chou) providing some funny banter (Rogen co-wrote the script with his writing partner Evan Goldberg). But the last 20 minutes is a complete write-off – I couldn’t wait for the endless car chase and shoot-’em-up finale, with Rogen shouting himself hoarse for the whole length of it, to end.

Two things I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else: in the hilarious bad-guy scenery-chewing showdown between James Franco and Christopher Waltz that sort of kicks of The Green Hornet, a wall-mounted screen in the bad guy’s lair is showing Canadian heavy metal band (and documentary subject) Anvil. I’m thinking this is probably Canadian Rogen’s idea.

Also: when Rogen’s Britt Reid and Cameron Diaz’s gal Friday first meet, there is a very weird exchange between them that stands out for being completely out of place and vaguely ageist. Basically, Reid asks why Diaz’s character is applying to be his receptionist so late (36 years old) in life. It seems out of sync with the rest of the movie and completely arbitrary (it’s certainly not funny).

'Aren't you a little old to be appearing in a lame superhero movie?'

Black Swan (illegal download, Wednesday night) – Darren Aronofsky strikes me as one of American movies’ most heavy-handed and uninteresting directors – I couldn’t get past the first 20 minutes of The Wrestler – so I wasn’t expecting much from his ballet epic. But Black Swan is much better than I expected it to be, and I found that its psychological thriller aspects held my interest through most of its 90-minute-plus running time. Although writing this three days later about the only thing I remember is Mila Kunis goes down on Natalie Portman, and that this may or may not be a dream.

Mila Kunis in Black Swan. Is it all - gasp! - a dream?

Chaplin (library DVD, Saturday night) – David Attenborough’s biopic stars a criminally young Robert Downey Jr. and a roster of big names circa the late ’80s/early ’90s, and Dan Aykroyd. For the most part Chaplin does the job, with Downey running away with the movie – big surprise there – although Kevin Kline cuts a very suave figure as Douglas Fairbanks. Bad age makeup and a cloying soundtrack undermine the film, but overall Chaplin works as a capsule summary of its subject’s life.

Kevin Kline as Douglas Fairbanks in Chaplin (1992)